Dumping Grounds (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 1)

by Lila Beckham

  The song that sounded happy, was the “Hey he hi ho, just a picking all day” song. They usually sang it in the evening. Joshua reckoned it was happy because the day was about done. The song that sounded mournful was the “Riverbank makes a very good road” song. “The dead trees show you the way, Left foot, peg foot, traveling on, Follow the drinking gourd,” was what he thought they said. He had heard them sing that in the mornings as they headed into the fields, dreading the long days work.

  The sad song was the “Wade in the water” song. That one always made Joshua feel a heavy sadness overcome him, maybe because they sounded very sad as they sung it. He’d heard that one on a Sunday morning…

  Jack was use to ghosts being there too. He did not usually acknowledge them, but this time, he was and this in itself concerned Joshua.

  The mist did not feel threatening, but it was still a ways from the cabin.

  It looked almost smoky, iridescent in its appearance, as smoke does when it rises effortlessly into the air from a slow burning flame.

  Joshua watched, waiting expectantly, mesmerized by its movement.

  The figure came closer and closer. The closer it came to him, the more it took shape. By the time it reached the foot of the steps leading up to the cabin, it was the full-bodied apparition of a woman.

  Her long flowing hair became the color of the night; her dress was thin, almost transparent. Pressed against the thin material, her nipples were firm and upright.

  She moved across the floorboards, apparently without moving her feet and legs. Joshua looked up at her as she stopped and stood over him.

  He could hear a low growl form in Jack’s throat and then become louder. Joshua was unable to make out the features of her face, but could tell where her eyes and mouth should be.

  He heard her voice without seeing her lips move. She said “Please find me, take me home.” Then she placed her hand on her hip and at the end of her fingers, he could see the rosebud tattoo through the thin material.

  When Joshua looked back to her face, it was clearly visible. Her hair was jet black. Her eyes painted with black pointy outlines, and her red luscious lips were sown shut with black thread.

  Joshua awoke with a start, jumped upright and almost tripped over his dog Jack, who lay at his feet.

  He fumbled around in the darkness hunting his cigarette lighter. He finally got his hands on the small table, which sat beside his rocker. He found his cigarettes, lighter, and then lit the small kerosene lantern he kept there on the table. The smell of the kerosene smoke was comforting as it illuminated his surroundings.

  Joshua gazed around and looked out as far as the lamplight would permit. It was pitch-black outside. Not even a moonbeam found its way into the darkness surrounding him.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped over Jack and sat back down in the rocker. Jack did not move, not even an ear twitch that Joshua could see.

  “Are you alive, Old Boy?” Joshua asked, taking the toe of his boot and touching Jacks nose. Jack raised his head, looked at Joshua and then rested his head across Joshua’s booted foot.

  Joshua poured himself a shot of whiskey, swallowed it in one gulp and then lit a cigarette.

  He sat there trembling, remembering his dream, but in his mind, he could not decipher if it had really been a dream. It seemed so real and he had felt wide-awake.

  “Maybe it was all that greasy food I had for supper,” he mumbled, and then took another swallow of whiskey, this time straight from the bottle. It was easier than trying to pour it into a glass with his hands shaking so.

  Once his nerves settled, Joshua snuffed the lamp and sat there staring out into the darkness, waiting …

  18

  Edges

  Emma felt she had been on the edge of death when held captive, for at any given moment, they could have snuffed out her life, as they would have a candle.

  Then, when she escaped, she felt she was on the edge of victory. Victorious in maneuvering her way through the old house and out to freedom, even though doubt formed shortly afterward, as to whether she had actually escaped, or had they played her like a fiddle and let her escape so they could chase her again.

  Emma again felt as if she was on the edge of death. The river had swallowed her whole. Her body was being digested through its muddy bowels… all of her oxygen was gone, her lungs, about to explode. There was nothing she could do other than wait. Wait, hope, and pray that God would see fit to raise her from the river bottom and breathe air into her near lifeless body.

  Once she relaxed and let her body lie on the bottom of the river, an amazing thing happened; Emma felt her body slowly began to float upward and onward.She did not know if she could stay conscious long enough to reach the surface, but she was sure as hell going to try!

  Emma knew she needed to avoid bends in the river where limbs and debris collected, in order to avoid becoming entangled in them, but she was no longer atop the water, she was submerged deep within it and when she opened her eyes, the water was too dark and murky to see.

  The river currents felt swift, Emma was no longer comfortable going with the flow. She gathered what strength she had left and began rolling in the deep water, her deft movements through the water seemingly bringing her closer to the surface.

  By her estimations, she should have surfaced way before now; she began to panic. Although it felt like a very long time to Emma, she had been below the surface for less than four minutes.

  Flowing headfirst into a pile of debris, fear overwhelmed her. Emma sucked in her breath in surprise, taking in a mouthful of water.

  Luckily, the water did not make it into her lungs, but she did feel as though something had cut her left arm as it went into the limbs. She grabbed a hold of the limbs and went to pulling herself upward, climbing up the largest limb she could feel. When she breached the surface, Emma spat out the water and sucked in the largest breath of air she could; it was painful to her airless lungs.

  She climbed out of the water and lay exhausted on the muddy bank. She had to hold onto roots that grew out of the bank, in order to maintain her place and keep from sliding back into the watery hellhole.

  Emma lay there until she could breathe easier and then raised her head and looked around.

  It was very dark, but she could make out an outline above her; she was still under the bridge.

  Undoubtedly, she had done a belly flop right into one of the dreaded undertows!

  “Lord, I could’ve sworn I’d floated further than that!” Emma mumbled, huffing for more air into her lungs.

  Disheartened by the situation, Emma wondered what to do next. Fear of jumping right back into the same Eddy, kept Emma hanging onto the roots for safety.

  Her common sense told her she needed to stay put until daylight. As she looked around, straining her eyes to see into the night, all she could see was darkness.

  It was pitch-black, but Emma could sense a thick fog form around her. She could feel the moisture of the fog settle on her face and the air she breathed was damp.

  Emma lay there, too exhausted to pull her self further up the bank. She was also afraid if she pulled harder, the rooted lifeline she held tightly, might snap. If it did, she would be hurled back into the river.

  She did not know where the tree limb she used to climb out was and it was too dark to look for it. Squirming around feeling for it, might dislodge unseen dangers, so she lay there, praying for daylight.

  Emma wrapped her fingers tighter onto the roots and grasses. She could feel the different thickness and textures of each within her hand. She closed her eyes.

  Emma figured that maybe she could use her other senses better if she shut down some of her more useful ones. Her sense of smell was useful; she could smell the rich soil, the pungent odor of creosote, also, the aroma of sweet olive and pine tar from the trees.

  As she lay there, she felt something else she was not used to feeling. She felt it constricting as it moved across her legs. Emma knew immediately what it wa
s; she had no doubt that it was a snake.

  It probably would not have been so terrible if it had just gone on and left her alone, but instead, it crawled under her clothes and up her back!

  Emma knew the snake was probably seeking the warmth of her body, but as its head came out the neck of her blouse near to her mouth and nose, she became frightened. She felt its tongue flick the air near the tip of her nose and resisted the urge to scream.

  Her grandfather had told her if she ever encountered a snake around the nursery just to stop in her tracks and let it go on its way.

  He said that most snakes were harmless and if left alone they would not harm you, but she had never been this close to a snake in her life.

  It took every ounce of Emma’s reserve not to become a screaming lunatic, especially when she felt more slithering creatures around her legs and thighs.

  I reckon he done brought all his damn kinfolk up in here to check me out, she thought quickly as the snakes crawled up her legs toward her waist.

  Emma almost lost it, when she felt one come up between her legs and across her buttocks. She had forgotten that she did not have on underwear beneath the vintage clothing.

  Emma’s breaths began to quicken. She feared she would begin to hyperventilate if she did not get control of herself. She took a deep shaky breath and held it, pretending to be dead, but then common sense told her the snakes could probably feel and hear her heartbeat. Her pretensions of being dead were useless.The only thing she could do was lie still and let them crawl all over her.

  “Well, just looky what we got ourselves here, Vern.” Emma heard his familiar, nasally sounding voice just as the light from their flashlights landed on her; she began to cry hysterically. It was hopeless; she would never escape them!

  19

  Bad Blood

  Daylight found Joshua on the back porch, still sitting in his rocker, his feet propped on the railing. The stiffness in his joints was worse this morning than previous mornings; he knew it was the result of the wreck.

  A fifty-year-old body does not recover as quickly as a thirty-year-old body does. He knew that because he was thirty the last time he was involved in an accident.

  He hoped it would be another twenty years before he was involved in another.

  Joshua was about to light up a smoke when he heard them. The field hollers he had not heard in awhile.

  He knew it was not because they had not been occurring; there was just too much else going on for him to pay attention to them.

  After hearing the first hollers, Joshua lit his smoke then leaned back and listened.

  He knew they were probably just echoes from the past, but just the same, he enjoyed hearing them. He felt the earth absorbed and held life’s daily occurrences, playing them back as you would a recording.

  He heard the voices began to sing.

  “Hey, he, hi, ho, off to werk the fields we go. Werk, werk, werk, the masser yells, and ye werk, werk, werk til he burins in hell” they sang.

  Joshua wondered if they sang those words in front of their master or behind his back. They usually sang that song in the mornings, and they always sounded less cheerful in the mornings.

  He thought it would be the other way around. After working the fields all day, they should be tired and unhappy, but no, the songs he heard late in the day were more cheerful in nature, the tone more jubilant, as if they’d defeated something they had not thought they could defeat.

  Joshua knew from experience that cotton was a tough opponent. He had worked for old man Tanner back in high school. Dragging a cotton sack was the least of work. Picking cotton bolls from plants could leave peoples fingers a bloodied, sore mess by the end of an hour.

  He lasted an entire week in Tanner Farms cotton fields, but swore he would never pick cotton again.

  His fingers still carried the scars of that week of picking cotton. He could not imagine being forced to do it day after day, year after year.

  He sure was glad Mister Tanner took pity on him and put him to picking up pecans instead.

  Partial remains of Caledonia, slash, the Moffett Plantation House, still jutted up from the earth, about a quarter mile north of Joshua’s cabin.

  The original plantation house that Mister Moffett built measured 35 feet by 35 feet square. It was three stories tall.

  Joshua remembered seeing a photograph of it when it still stood, back about 1850. He saw it somewhere when he was just a boy, but the details failed him now. It might have been when Missus Christopher told him the story of it, or it could have been in school, he was not sure.

  One corner had stood for over a hundred years until vandals destroyed it the previous year. It was most likely the cornerstone of the building.

  Joshua had always wondered if it contained the infamous Confederate gold Mister Moffett supposedly had hidden on his land or maybe they had hidden some other treasure in there when the plantation was built.

  He himself had thought of digging under the corner before just to see what was beneath it, but he felt it wrong to profit off others misfortune.

  When the fire drew them there to investigate the previous year, he had first thought that someone else figured the same thing he did and busted it apart, stole the contents, and then set the fire, but upon investigating, found that no one had dug in the area.

  Teenagers, one of them, Autry Reston’s youngest boy, Joe, set the fire and destroyed the wall. Joe claimed that every time he looked toward the window, he saw someone looking back at him. It had freaked him out so bad that he had nightmares and at first refused to go back there.

  Then, Joe’s friend suggested they destroy the wall and windows so the ghost would leave.

  Joshua had no doubt the boy had seen a ghost, but destroying the old glass windowpanes was uncalled for; it pissed him off. He should have taken them out and preserved them himself, but hindsight was 20/20.

  The songs of the slaves got fainter with the light of day, but Joshua lingered in the rocker, watching the squirrels play. Jack stood up, stretched, and then wandered out into the yard for his morning constitutional.

  Jack’s movement was not as graceful as it had once been; age was catching up with him too.

  Joshua knew he should be breaking in and training a replacement, but dreaded Jack’s demise. He knew Jack was 12 years old and could possibly live two or three more years. He was the forth dog Joshua had owned in his lifetime. To Joshua, dogs were like family, much like children he reckoned. He found it hard to believe that dogs had no soul, but according to Preacher McNeil, that was what the good book said.

  Whatever the case may be, Joshua knew dogs had some sort of spirit. He had seen the ghost of his first dog a couple of hours after he died. He had looked up and there came Spot, wandering around the corner of the house.

  Dogs were a lot like people. They could be loving and protective, or grumpy and shy. Many were also very smart, and he knew they felt emotions.

  You could see the sadness in their expression when they were sad or if they were scared, you could see that too.

  You could definitely see when they were happy. Their mood changed the same as peoples do; most of all, they were good companions and great listeners.

  As he thought about it, Joshua realized that some dogs were just plain mean and evil and no amount of being good to them would change that, but there were people like that too. Some people were evil and cunning and no amount of loving kindness could change them either.

  Moreover, there were people who were also soulless; that too stood to reason.

  Joshua stood up, stretched, and then went inside. While the coffee was brewing, he took a shower and shaved. His reflection in the mirror starred back at him from blackened eyes. An image of the black mustang coming toward him flashed through his mind.

  The strange thing about the accident was, he could not remember the impact, at all.

  Joshua was drinking a cup of coffee when he heard a car pull up to the front of his house. It was the garage delive
ring his new patrol car. He stepped out onto the porch and scrunched up his face; it was black with a white top. “At least its not solid black,” he mumbled to himself. The phone began ringing just as he was signing the delivery ticket; it was Deputy Cook.

  “Did you have time to think about what we gone do about those boys?

  “No, not really, but I still intend to go have a talk with Dotty Reston. She might need a little persuasion, but I believe I can get her to help out with them boys of hers.”

  “I hope so, Sheriff. We cannot have all that bad blood spewing all over Moffettville. If you could a seen what was going on when we drove up in that parking lot, you would a thought those boys were the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s trying to kill one another.”

  “That bad, huh.”

  “Yes, Sir, even that big ox of a boy they call Boukie; you know how quiet he is. It takes a lot to get that boy riled up… anyhow, the biggest Reston boy was name calling him and threatening him, and just wouldn’t let up.

  All of a sudden, I saw Boukie jump off the back of that truck, run at the Reston boy and knock him flat of his ass, then, when he was a lying on the ground there, he kept mouthing off so old Boukie, who had started back toward his truck, turned around and kicked him like a football.

  He went about two feet up in the air, then landed in a crumpled heap.

  He wouldn’t a spoutin’ off at the mouth after that, just hollering for help.That’s what busted that boys ribs and punctured his lung. Those boys of Hannah’s were right there in the middle of it too!”

  “Why didn’t y’all stop them if you got there in time to see all of that?”

  “What’d you want us to do, shoot em? They’s just boys, Sheriff. We didn’t know they was gonna get that rough.”

  “And y’all couldn’t arrest any of them; was they to rough for y’all to handle too?”

  “Naw, Sir. When Davis shot up into the air, all of them boys took off a running and left the injured one laying there. Boukie looked me dead in the eye, nodded his head as if to say good evening, then got in his truck and drove off, the rest of the Stringer gang jumps in the back and rides off with him. The Reston gang just ran off across the road and into the woods.”